Christmas Special on GOP Influence

“The 2008 Senate races are in full swing,” begins a recent letter to GOP sympathizers from North Carolina Senator Richard Burr. “With Republicans defending twice as many seats as the Democrats, we certainly have an enormous task ahead of us.” Burr’s letter, sent on behalf of his Next Century Fund Leadership PAC, says he wants to do everything possible to ensure that GOP candidates “have the resources they need going into Election Day.”

“Early money” is vital to the GOP’s congressional hopes, writes Burr. Hence, his PAC, which raises money to support other Republican candidates, is running a year-end promo. Contributors of $5,000 get a “max-out package” that entitles them to take part in two trips next year with Burr and other party luminaries. They can pick from among three possible affairs: a May “Golf Outing” to Gainesville, Virginia’s famous Robert Trent Jones course; a “Friends & Family” trip that same month to North Carolina’s Outer Banks; or a fall golf event at Pinehurst in North Carolina.

But there’s more. Donors who pony up their $5,000 will also get to attend two party events in Washington, DC, with details to be forthcoming.

For those financially stretched thin due to the holidays, there’s more good news: Burr is extending his offer through mid-2008.

“Eight months pregnant I told an old woman sitting beside me on the bus that the egg that hatched my baby came from my wife’s ovaries. I didn’t know how the old woman would take it; one can never know. She was delighted: That’s like a fairy tale!”

“Between 2007 and 2010, Albany’s poverty rate jumped 12 points, to a record high of 39.9 percent. More than two thirds of Albany’s 76,000 residents are black, and since 2010, their poverty rate has climbed even higher, to nearly 42 percent.”

“We think we are the only people in the world who live with threat, but we have to work with regional leaders who will work with us. Bibi is taking the country into unprecedented international isolation.”

Photograph by Adam Golfer

Ratio of money spent by Britons on prostitution to that spent on hairdressing:

“Shelby is waiting for something. He himself does not know what it is. When it comes he will either go back into the world from which he came, or sink out of sight in the morass of alcoholism or despair that has engulfed other vagrants.”